BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands now worth $2 trillion

29 April, 2009

Google is the world’s first $100 billion brand, number one for the third year running

New York, New York — the fourth annual BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking published today by Millward Brown Optimor reveals that brands sustain their value, despite the tough economic environment.

The BrandZ Top 100 ranking identifies the dollar value of brands. It does this by combining financial data with research on consumers and business-to-business users from BrandZ, the world’s largest brand equity study.

The value of the top 100 brands has held its value at $1.95 tn (a marginal increase of 1.7 percent). Google is number one with a value of $100 bn, Microsoft is number two at $76.2 bn and Coca-Cola enters the top three for the first time at $67.6 bn.

“In the current environment, where the value of many businesses has fallen, brand has become even more important because it can help to sustain companies in tough times.” said Joanna Seddon, CEO Millward Brown Optimor. “Those who continue to invest in their brand will be better positioned for business growth as the economic situation starts to improve than those who have cut spend.”

There are a total of 15 new brands entering the ranking this year. Pampers is the highest entrant at no. 31, followed by Nintendo (no.32) and VISA (no.36). Trends that can be identified from this year’s rankings are:

Value — Brands that represent good value for money have done well, this is about quality as much as price, for example Wal-Mart (+19 percent), ALDI (+49 percent) and Auchan (+48 percent). H&M (+8 percent) is now the number one apparel brand.

Vice — People still reward themselves with little treats when money is tight. Brands such as McDonald’s (+34 percent), Marlboro (+33 percent) and Budweiser (+23 percent) have all done well.

At Home — Brands that can be experienced at home have shown strong growth. This includes home shopping: Amazon (+85 percent) and eBay (+16 percent); Coffee that can be prepared at home: Nespresso (+27 percent) and Nescafe (+23 percent); and gaming — Nintendo jumped into the ranking for the first time at no. 32.

Wireless — The increased popularity of using the internet on the move through devices such as the iPhone and BlackBerry has led to huge increases for the mobile operators category as a whole, driven by demand for data services. Vodafone enters the top 10 for the first time this year (+45 percent).

Commenting on the ranking, Eileen Campbell, Global CEO of Millward Brown said: “It is a fantastic achievement to be one of the most valuable brands in the world, and we congratulate all brands that are featured in this ranking. At a time when marketing spend is under greater scrutiny than ever, this ranking is a way for marketers to identify the value that their brand is creating for the business.”

The complete BrandZ ranking, including regional and category breakdowns, is available online: www.millwardbrown.com/brandz and www.brandz.com. The rankings are also available as a free iPhone application from these sites and from the iTunes store.

About the BrandZ RankingDeveloped for WPP’s operating companies by Millward Brown Optimor, the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking enters its fourth year in 2009. It is unique because it takes into account the opinions of consumers and business-to-business users from over 20 countries each year. This input comes from BrandZ, the world’s largest brand equity study.

The BrandZ study, commissioned by WPP and conducted annually by Millward Brown, measures the brand equity of thousands of global “consumer facing” and business-to-business brands, and has interviewed over 1 million consumers globally. Consumer perception of a brand is a key input in determining brand value because brands are a combination of business performance, product delivery, clarity of positioning, and leadership.

The BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking is calculated using a methodology called, “Economic Use” which is emerging as the preferred way to calculate brand valuation. This means that brand value is calculated by looking at the role that brand plays in the purchase decision and identifying what proportion of the business value can be attributed purely to the brand. Besides inputs from the BrandZ study, the ranking uses financial data from Bloomberg and market and product data from Datamonitor. The ranking takes into account regional variations since even for truly global brands measures of brand contribution might differ substantially across countries.

The ranking provides the following:

• Brand Value — expressed in dollars • Brand Contribution — an indication of the brand’s effectiveness in driving business earnings. This is expressed as an index from 1 to 10 (10 being high) • Brand Momentum — the index of expected short-term brand growth. This expressed from 1 to 5 (5 being high) • Brand Value as a percentage of market cap — due to the dramatic fluctuations currently being experienced in the financial markets, we have chosen to express this calculation for the financial institutions and insurance categories instead of momentum

The following tables are published:

• Top 100 Brands by Brand Value • Regional rankings (in terms of the country where the brand has its principle listing) • Category rankings:

About Millward BrownMillward Brown (www.millwardbrown.com) is one of the world's leading research agencies and is expert in effective advertising, marketing communications, media and brand equity research. Through the use of an integrated suite of validated research solutions — both qualitative and quantitative — Millward Brown helps clients build strong brands and services. Millward Brown has more than 75 offices in 48 countries. Additional practices include Millward Brown's Global Media Practice (media effectiveness unit), Millward Brown Optimor (focused on helping clients maximize the returns on their brand and marketing investments), Millward Brown Precis (PR measurement practice) and Dynamic Logic (the world leader in digital marketing effectiveness). Millward Brown is part of Kantar, WPP's insight, information and consultancy group.

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